A game is something that we play. A videogame is a digital playspace. This is the shape of games to come. To impose stricter definitions will only serve to stifle creativity and unnecessarily celebrate past trends in favor of present and future possibilities— this is already happening.

Wombflash Forest

If these proposed definitions are so broad as to include everything, and now everything is thus a game, then let’s play everything!

[…]

If we’re going to admit systems of ranking into our games, to construct goals, their design should come from an intimacy with the materials of the playspace as a freely-played space, meaning one explored through our own self-directed (and constantly dissolving?) goals; these goals should invite us to play with processes that direct us toward and help realize our vision of inner utopia.

You’re going to have people saying, “What, plants know when I’m chewing on them? I’m not going to chew them anymore. I’ve got nothing left to eat!
Anyway, I was forced to do away with democracy roughly a thousand years ago because it was endangering my empire.

I’ve been playing the same game of Civilization II for almost 10 years. This is the result. : gaming

A fantastic report on a game of Civilization II that has been running for 10 years. I agree with Nicolas in that these kinds of reports are rare, and the concept of long play is an interesting one to explore further.

From Banksy’s Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall. A perspective I can to some extent relate to, although I have to say I consider myself sickeningly well-behaved. As a model for society however, it falls flat, of course.